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Augmented reality, 5G networks, cryptocurrencies, electric cars: sometimes, our obsession with technological advances can blind us to the success of older inventions still commonplace today. Consider the humble umbrella, with its history stretching back to ancient China.

The supreme example, though, of the sort of “invisible” innovation we now take for granted is, arguably, writing – concisely defined by one scholar of its 5,000-year history as a “system of graphic symbols … used to convey any and all thought”.

The written word is so much a part of the fabric of everyday human society – and has been for millennia – that it feels somehow inevitable, like a feature of the natural world.